“Some of this is due to the fact that Baby Boomers retiring — but only some,” HuffPost’s Mark Gongloff wrote last month. “Most of it has to do with the fact that the economy is still too weak to create enough jobs to draw people into the market. This is most clearly evident in the fact that younger people are leaving the labor force, too — or never even entering it — because they can’t find jobs.”

Additional information has been added to this article to clarify that retired persons and students are included as part of the total population from which the labor force participation rate is calculated.